Strelsa Brown
Strelsa Brown was an English film actress who was born in 1919 in Tientsin, China.
Born as Edna Pearl Brown, her film career began with an uncredited part in The Ghosts of Berkeley Square in 1947. Her most noteworthy film credit is Quo Vadis. She played the role of Rufia in a film that earned numerous Academy Award nominations. Other films in which she appeared include Love I Haven't (1951), Sappho venere di Lesbo (1960), and Romanoff and Juliet (1961).
Brown's true name is Edna Brown Muss. She was married to Henry Muss, an infantry soldier, who was a World War II hero. Muss was killed in action in 1945.
In 1962, Brown claimed that she was owed between $2 and $3 million of a fortune begun by New York builder Isaac Muss, the father of Henry Muss. No will was left. Until then she had lived purely on her war pension from the US. She had given up acting on stage as a soubrette,due to her age,to look after her son David. The brothers and sisters of her husband, Henry Muss, just prior to 1962 had given her an ultimatum..sign that she agreed one of the wealthiest men in New York had left a total amount of $20.000 and they would continue to send $100 a month to her...(money they had started strangely to send just one year before at the time Isaac Muss had died) or else they would stop the monthly cheque. They stopped the monthly cheque and her son could not go to university. He was lucky enough to be put in contact with a wealthy friend of his grandmother who happened, like David, to be living in Italy. She. Mary Duyvendaak, gave David $80 a month so he could resume studies and continued this gift until he graduated in medicine in 1968. His mother never remarried and eventually committed suicide in 1976.
References
- Lowell, Massachusetts Sun, Around The World, Saturday, 4 August 1962, Page 10.